Professor Robin Millar OBE FInstP

University of York
For internationally leading research in physics education.

Robin is one of the foremost physics (and science) education researchers in the country, with a strong international reputation.

His work has influenced curriculum design, teaching and assessment across the whole of physics teaching. Not least through his work with the science education group at York and in several high profile curriculum projects, he has shaped how we think about physics teaching in classrooms across the country.

His main research interests are the teaching, learning and assessment of conceptually demanding topics in science, especially in physics; practical work in science; science curriculum policy and design; and the relationships between research and practice in science education.

Robin has directed or co-directed major research projects on young people’s images of science, the influence of students’ procedural and conceptual knowledge on their performance of science investigations, and the use of diagnostic questions for stimulating changes in teachers’ classroom practices. He was coordinator of the Evidence-based Practice in Science Education (EPSE) Research Network, which was funded in the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme. He was also a core member of the Nuffield Foundation seminar series that led to the Beyond 2000 report and a co-author of the report.

He has been centrally involved in several major curriculum development projects, including Salters GCSE Science, AS-level Science for Public Understanding, A-level Science in Society and the Twenty First Century Science suite of GCSE courses.

Internationally, he has contributed to several research and development projects, including the EU Labwork in Science Education project and the OECD PISA project as a member of the Science Expert Group for the 2006 and 2015 surveys. Robin was president of the European Science Education Research Association from 1999-2003, and of the Association for Science Education for 2012. He was awarded the Lawrence Bragg medal and prize of the Institute of Physics in 2008.